Elijah was a man having similar emotions to you and prayed a prayer that it should not rain and it did not rain onto the ground for three years and six months and again he prayed and the sky gave wetness and the land brought forth crops.
This wasn’t quite the model for chatting about the weather I was hoping for, as, although οὐκ ἔβρεξεν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς is on the face of it intransitive, the whole thrust of the writers argument is that there is a supreme being who is sending the rain and hence at will can stop it.
Teleclides, who (so Wikipedia tells me) was a comic poet sounds more promising. If there is an extant chat about the weather in existence I would expect to find it in a comedy above all else. If I can make it my classical library tomorrow I shall try and check to see if they have some of Teleclides’ fragments.
Phrynichus: in some old comedy attributed to Telecleides the comic poet, this was uttered (βρέχει instead of ὕει), but even if the play were genuine, we would avoid saying this even once.
N.B. Daivid: I suspect this is just about all you’ll find on the subject of Telecleides and βρέχει.
Epictetus: In [real?] life there are some unpleasantnesses and difficulties. In Olympia [does he mean Olympus?], you never get hot, you’re never crowded, you never have a bad bath, you never get wet when it’s wet/when it rains.
Apocalypse: These men have the ability to shut down the sky, so that rain never rains/makes things wet during the days of their prophethood, and they have the power over the waters to turn them into blood, and to shake the earth at every stroke as many times as they want.
As I remarked in the weather thread, the intransitive impersonal use of βρέχει, equivalent to our “It’s raining,” is quite rare, but it’s not completely unattested in post-classical Greek (the Ep.James occurrence is certainly intransitive, and apparently impersonal too), so if you want to use the verb in this way, daivid, I don’t see why you shouldn’t. It’s just not the usual way the verb is used.
The Apocalypse occurrence, ἵνα μὴ ὑετὸς βρέχῃ, is different: the verb has a subject, as it usually does. Apocalypse is a poor guide to Greek usage, but you could use that too. Ζευς βρεχει would be less abnormal, though.
And adding an object, e.g. τοὺς πόδας or τὴν γῆν or με, would restore the regular construction.
So you can use it in the passive too, of things or people, e.g. ἐβρεχόμην “I was getting soaked,” βεβρεγμένος εἰμί “I’m soaked.” The Epictetus passage provides a compound, καταβρέχομαι “I’m getting drenched, soaked through.”
You can be soaked in wine, too, i.e. sloshed, sozzled, if ever you care to venture beyond the state of the weather.
I think the Phrynichus means “… which even if the play was genuine we’d avoid using by reason of its being a hapax eirhmenon” (i.e. a unique occurrence). As an atticistic prescriptivist (Nazi, as Qimmik termed him), he resists non-Attic usage. He represents a 2nd-century reactionary movement that can be seen as a kind of ancient equivalent of the 19th-cent. katharevousa, reacting against contemporary usage.
And the Epictetus: “Don’t (unpleasantnesses etc) happen in Olympia? Don’t you get burned? Don’t you …”
Menander’s comedy the Misoumenos starts out with a shut-out lover mooching in the rain.
Bracketed lines unmetrical, should not be here, most likely M. Aurelius stuck them there for their clarity (its an Athenian prayer, those guys were always praying for rain).
ὗσον < ὕω (related to English wet).
Not totes relevant but since Zeus and rain were mentioned I thought why not. Especially given that rain and sky were his most important domains.
That one seems especially relevant and Qimmik, I do think he means Olympia. The Ancient Greek version of the games must of have been very like a modern pop festival - very basic facilities but worth it for the spectacle.
Point taken but it is time I tried out some other ways of saying it.
I shall check that out, thanks.
But a useful reminder that the transitive use is more common and it reinforces the point of mwh in that Aurelius felt the need to add an object.
Brackets are a bit harsh, aren’t they? There is a bit of grit in the last line, but it’s not terrible. Maybe “πόλεως” would smooth it out, but the contrast between the imperfection of Ἀθηναίων and the resolution of πεδίων is pleasing. Besides, the last line adds dignity to the poetical image. Here’s my reading to illustrate: